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EMIS Newsflash – January 29, 2014

1/29/2014

SDC Now Open

The following message from School Finance notes changes made while the SDC was closed. We also include the message originally sent when the SDC was first opened with financial data on December 12, 2013 for reference.

Last month, you received the message below when the Ohio Department of Education placed your preliminary FY2013 report card financial data on the Secure Data Center. Based on the questions and comments we received, the department has revised some of the data. On January 29, the Secure Data Center will re-open to allow you to look at the revisions, including the updated rankings, before the data is made available to the public.

Changes to your school’s or district’s results compared to the results posted in December stem primarily from two changes. First, the department corrected the categorization of certain function codes, such as instructional technology codes, that were used in FY13 but were eliminated in the Spring 2013 USAS Manual update. Second, the Average Daily Membership (ADM) used for the per-pupil calculations has been updated to be more consistent with previous years’ Expenditure Flow Model ADM. For most districts, the unweighted EFM ADM will vary slightly from the ADM shown on the report card, as EFM ADM excludes some types of students, such as those attending a county board of developmental disabilities.

Questions regarding these data should be directed to Eric Bode, executive director, Office of School Finance at eric.bode@education.ohio.gov.

Message Concerning Financial Data (sent December 12, 2013)

Thank you to those of you in traditional districts, community schools, joint vocational schools and STEM schools who have reviewed, validated and corrected your financial data through EMIS in recent weeks in preparation for meeting new requirements in the state budget bill. As you will remember, the new state budget bill calls for the inclusion of Fiscal Year 2013 financial data for your schools and districts on the Local Report Card. In addition, rankings of classroom and non-classroom expenditures are required to be posted in a prominent location on the Ohio Department of Education website.

The department is now in the process of compiling the information for the 2012-2013 Local Report Card and for the rankings. As part of our quality assurance process before the data release, preliminary reports reflecting the submitted data are provided for your review. For districts, community schools and STEM schools, these preliminary reports are available in the Secure Data Center. Treasurers who do not have access to the Secure Data Center should contact their superintendent and EMIS coordinator to access and view the information. For joint vocational school districts, the data are being sent via email to the superintendents.

A few key notes regarding these preliminary reports:

The information reflected in these reports is not necessarily comparable to some historical calculations of Expenditure Per Pupil (such as the Expenditure Flow Model). The methodology used for calculating FY2013 Equivalent Pupil is the same used last year in the Fiscal Benchmark report. The department will continue to review the calculation methodology and will update as appropriate in future years.

Systematic statewide statistical analysis was completed to identify statistical outliers in the data. Statistical outliers may indicate incomplete or erroneous data was reported to the department or may be a result of a district or community school’s unique set of circumstances. For those entities whose data was flagged as a statistical outlier, the Secure Data Center report contains a note: “Data under review and subject to change.” For the initial public release, tentatively planned for early 2014, the reports will contain this note unless ODE is notified in writing by the district/community school that the data are complete and accurate. However, the department anticipates that an additional opportunity to correct any incomplete/erroneous data may be provided in February 2014.

As part of this review and quality assurance process, if an error is identified in any data compilation performed by the department, the error will be corrected and the computed data may change accordingly.

Questions regarding these data should be directed to Eric Bode, executive director, Office of Quality School Choice and Funding at eric.bode@education.ohio.gov.